Today is International Women's Day – an important moment to celebrate and thank the incredible women staff at TRAFFIC who contribute to our mission to ensure that trade in wild species is legal and sustainable, for the benefit of the planet and people.
The IWD theme this year is "Inspire Inclusion." TRAFFIC has made a strong commitment in our new 2030 Strategy to deepen our work to reduce gender inequalities and marginalisation of women in wild species supply chains. We are focusing on scaling up support for activities that ensure the full, equitable, and effective representation and participation of women in decision making, implementation, and monitoring in our projects.
We are already having impact on the ground, as you can from this article about how we are empowering women who harvest jatamansi in Nepal. https://lnkd.in/eSERpYdw
Internally, we are committed to nurturing a strong organizational culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion – and ensuring that the composition of our staff and leadership reflects the broad diversity of the stakeholders we work with.
While International Women's Day is a welcomed time to celebrate continued progress for women, we are cognizant that gender inequality persists throughout the world – not only in the communities where we work on the ground but also in our own conservation organizations.
A recent article in Frontiers flags that women in US conservation organizations often feel they have less influence and scope for contribution to conservation and science than men, and face multiple barriers across their conservation careers due to gender bias (see: https://lnkd.in/eq62XS8d)
We need to continue to take strong action for gender equality within our own organizations and in our work on the ground – on every day of the year.
Iza-belle(a)
1moThey deserve all the love in the world as they give more love than humans ever could!